Taozi Xiaotou (The peach thief)
by Eos Blaze 0402
Summary: She remembers the taste of divine peaches. How foolish had she been to think that they were the best thing she had tasted in her young life? She abhors the taste of peaches now, smell of peach blossoms too, the mere thought of them. Those peaches, they turned her into this. She is a goddess, she thinks in disgust.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

**Ta'al: Daughter**

**Tatko: Father**

**Aether: The essence of creation**

**Likanen verta: mixed blood, dirty blood**

**It's Delena. I swear on holy Styx.**

* * *

_Heaven is a barren wasteland._

Contrary to the popular belief, heaven isn't a place of absolute beauty with ornate palaces and pristine columns, of vines snaking atop bejeweled statues and gaily minor gods. Well, at least not all of it.

Heaven is a forgotten photograph of white skies and dark brown earth. And the gods, gods too reside in the same shades of black and white.

So, it comes as a huge shock to little Elena when she spies a goddess walking by the banks of the holy lake, resplendent in her deep red robes. She is what Elena thinks goddess' are supposed to look like unlike the white clothed, submissive women with lowered gaze who always walk behind the high and mighty gods.

Her skin is the color of rich earth that little Elena likes to walk barefoot on. On her cheeks shine stars that Elena often sees in the night skies. Her lips are deep red and her eyes, entire cosmos resides in her eyes. Her ashen white hair flows down her back, every tendril swaying madly as if it has a life of its own.

It's eerie to spy on this goddess, for Elena has never seen a goddess holding a sword.

The blade is long and sharp, the hilt, a carved, curved beauty in a shade of off-white that little Elena instinctively knows is bone. The goddess walks on, humming an unfamiliar song and dragging her sword that makes clanking noises when it encounters pebbles.

She has seen her father polishing the bones to make reeds and lyres that heavenly musicians play with somber dignity in annual godly gatherings. Now, to think of it, Elena has never seen this goddess in any godly function.

_Who is she?_

At that precise moment, a butterfly flies in her vision and she is distracted enough to takes her eyes off the goddess who disappears without a trace when she turns to look at the shores of the lake again...

* * *

~TX~

* * *

She asks her father about the goddess that night.

He stops carving swirls and curves on a polished piece of wood. 'Who?' He asks carefully.

She begins her explanation anew, carefully detailing everything she remembers.

'What were you doing near the lake?' her father questions instead of giving her an answer. He looks worried and there are lines at the corner of his eyes that Elena doesn't like.

The lines mean that he is getting old. He is still young by the godly standards, but he ages every day in absence of the ambrosia that is only reserved for more important gods than minor deity of musical instruments.

'Who is she?' she asks again, stubbornly ignoring her father's frowning face.

'Ta'al,' he says affectionately, 'do you want to draw vines of moonflower?'

'I want to know who she is, Tatko,' she whines, making her eyes all big and watery and pushing her lower lip out.

Unlike other godly spawns, Elena is of _likanen verta_ descent.

Her mother was a barbarian minor deity of a distant land and Elena is the result of her father's weakness.

She is the proof of his shame, they whisper when they watch her running around without supervision, eschewing the stuffy rules and decorum for the sake of curiosity and childish enjoyment.

Unlike other fathers of heaven, hers is too soft-hearted, too loving to ignore the tell-tale sign of tears in her eyes.

'Now, now, Ta'al. It is not something to cry about,' he says as he moves his instruments aside and pulls her in his lap; warm, rough fingers wipe away the moisture.

'Now, what I am about to tell you is just a story. A long time ago when the world was new and the gods young, there was a goddess with eyes so bright that they put young suns to shame. This goddess had not come to be like the other gods. It was said that she was personification of _aether_ itself from whence everything had emerged in this young universe…'

She is immersed in his tale, tears forgotten, mind busy in imagining bright supernovas and dark skies.

'In the beginning, the universe wasn't as peaceful as it is today. New gods sprung from the womb of _aether_ every day, ready to fight for newly formed terrains and budding planets, eager to hold stars and crush them to taste the dust. Soon, the universe was overflowing with gods who were too eager to tear a chunk of it to keep it for themselves. Balance was necessary for creation. The void birthed its first deity then…'

'What is void?' she asks curiously.

Her father is startled.

He takes a moment before answering.

'Void…is the end of everything. It's where life meets its end and only darkened silence remains. So, from void stepped out the first primordial,' her father whispers, 'a demon whose name was Vulcas. He was the godkiller, the perfect solution for a universe filled with beings created from _aether_…'

'So, he started killing gods?' her eyes are big and she is looking at him in confusion. Gods just keep getting old and old, they don't die!

'Y-Yes,' her father replies hesitantly.

'What happened then?'

'Well, she stood on the edge of void and looked into its heart; the void looked back into hers. Some say, she hollowed out her chest and let void fill the empty space. She reached down and picked up the fallen sword once wielded by God king Ithran and in a single blow, separated Vulcas' head from his torso. She bathed in his blood, and picked the bones from muscles to make a hilt for her blade…'

Her father looks at her then, his eyes roving her face to find the terror, the horror at what she has heard.

He finds none.

'Where did she go then? Why isn't she the queen of gods?' Young Elena asks instead.

'Well, I don't know, Ta'al,' he says. 'Some say she went insane from looking into the void, others say she became void herself. No one saw her after that day…'

Elena is stumped. Is she the only one who saw the Goddess after all that time?

She feels funny in her stomach.

'Ta'al, you shouldn't talk about her with anyone else,' her father advises sternly and she nods.

She wants to smile.

No one has seen the Goddess but her.

No high gods and goddesses, no priests, priestesses or deities.

Only Elena has seen the Goddess…

* * *

~TX~

* * *

She ventures close to the lake every day after that.

From early morning to the dusk when last rays of sun fade from the horizon, she keeps vigil from her post at the tall oak tree.

Elena is somewhat of an expert when it comes to climbing trees.

Months pass and still the Goddess has yet to make another appearance.

Her enthusiasm deserted her in second week; her curiosity was next to go, and now it seems her desire to witness the Goddess once more is on verge of departure too.

The sun has set, and the sky is turning into that color which often is more black than blue.

She can see the northern supernova clusters. Soon, the sky will be a brilliantly painted canvass of colors with million stars twinkling.

She jumps down from the low hanging branch, and then proceeds to brush her robes of dry leaves and bits of grass. But the brown on the cream colored cloth refuses to come off.

She sighs at the prospect of another lecture she is set to receive from her father when he sees her in this state.

Well, she can point out that her robes just get dirty and not torn as they used to once upon a time.

_She hears it then, the singing._

She hides behind the wide trunk and stares at the stretch of shore that is visible from here.

The Goddess is on a stroll tonight…

The song that she is singing is the same one, a beautiful haunting tune of misery and secrets, of hopes burned and dreams broken too easily. Elena's chest feels funny as she continues to listen the song she doesn't understand, a song in a tongue that she doesn't know.

Her eyes prickle and her lips tremble.

She doesn't like this feeling.

Hot tears fall down her cheeks on their own and she furiously wipes them away at the back of her hand.

The Goddess must be so sad, she thinks.

She moves out of her hiding spot and stealthily makes her way behind the red clad woman. The Goddess is lost in her own world.

She doesn't even notice the child following her…

* * *

~TX~

* * *

By the time Elena actually understands the true meaning of the Goddess' story, it's already too late.

This cold that she imprisons beneath her skin, this remnant that the goddess gifted her—this is loneliness that aches inside her.

The Goddess didn't look into the void, she looked into Vulcas' eyes and he looked back into hers.

Now, she understands the song that made her cry that one time when she forgot herself in the melody and followed the Goddess to her doom.

_Now, Elena sings it too._

The Goddess fell in love with the godkiller.

And in the end she killed him for survival of her kind.

The thought makes her shiver.

She wraps the fur snugly around her and continues walking to the edge of the forest, the boundary of her so-called kingdom.

She leaves snow in her wake, glassy prison that traps the green grass that has managed to survive her earlier strolls.

Her life would have been so different had she not followed the Goddess that night, she thinks. She remembers being hungry in the garden of the Goddess.

Now, the feeling is foreign to her.

She remembers the taste of divine peaches. How foolish had she been to think that they had been the best thing she had ever eaten in her young life?

She abhors the taste of peaches now, smell of peach blossoms too, the mere thought of them.

Those peaches, they turned her into this. This lonely wraith that dwells at the edge of civilizations, not permitted to step a foot inside their warm, colorful existence.

She is a goddess, she thinks in disgust.

A goddess who took birth to undergo her punishment.

Sometimes when she falls asleep in her empty castle, the cold gives her dreams. Dreams that are memories of her bygone life.

In her dreams, she sees the Goddess waking her up, staring at her juice stained clothes, still wet mouth and sticky hands. She sees herself standing before the God King who is too eager to snuff out her existence. She sees her father kneeling, begging for mercy from the God King who turns his face away, from the Goddess who looks down with blank eyes. She sees the Goddess walk towards her, a sorrowful expression on her face.

_In her dreams, she feels as if she is about to die._

But the Goddess does something even worse. She takes Elena's hands and pours in her small body, years of loneliness and grief. She sees herself screaming and twitching. She sees her hair changing from brunette to white. In her dream, she wants to scream and ask, "All this because I ate few peaches?"

_Her dreams don't end there. _

She sees herself being led by hand to the very edge of the universe where beyond the woods of Callente, in the frozen wasteland, the Goddess builds her palace. Her father is there too. Standing away from her, wrapped in layers and layers of fur, with tears in his eyes that freeze when they fall on his cheeks.

He has come to say goodbye. This is all he has been allowed.

Even in her dream, Elena feels numb.

The Goddess kisses her forehead before leaving, whispering words of blessing.

And when Elena wakes up from her dream, she rues the day she laid eyes on the mad Goddess.

Years and years have passed since she came here. Her father is dust in his mausoleum.

She was not permitted to attend even his last rites.

She doesn't get invited to the annual godly councils.

The gods have no need of ice goddess. They are happy to let her languish in her prison.

Years after her banishment here, a new god ascended as God King and as a gesture of goodwill, he extended the area of her prison to include parts of woodlands of Callente.

She should be grateful, she thinks. Trees are always a welcome change from ice.

She used to love climbing trees, but she doesn't try anymore. What use is finding small pleasures in life when your life is just a long continuity of nothingness?

It's time she returned to her palace.

The green makes her wish for things she can't have.

The soil feels nice beneath her feet and between her toes before it freezes. It will thaw in a couple of days if sun keeps on shining the way it was shinning today.

'Help me!'

She cocks her head to the side to listen properly. Did she really hear someone ask for help, or is she hallucinating now? Finally giving in to the madness after years of being alone and mostly silent?

'Please, somebody help me!'

She starts walking towards the general direction of the voice. Who is here in these parts of the woods at this time of the day? Not even animals venture in her cold kingdom.

Is he a trick? Her feet stop. Is he some test? Is she being observed right now? She looks around wildly, trying to identify if someone is indeed watching her every move.

'Please! Please, save me!'

The cries intensify. She finds herself walking again.

What if he is some apparition conjured by the Goddess? She comes to a standstill.

The mere thought of the Goddess makes her tremble in her skin. The memory of those mad eyes staring piteously at her makes her want to hide.

She turns away. She can't face the Goddess again. This curse is hard enough. She doesn't want to add to her miseries.

She is about to walk away when she hears it as clear as the bells chiming in her father's workshop.

'Goddess Elena! Save me…'

* * *

**To be continued next week...**


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

He is half-dead by the time she drags him inside the empty foyer of her palace. His clothes are torn up in places from where bloody bones and mangled muscles peek at her. He is a godling by the looks of him. His face is too swollen for her to form any opinion about his appearance, but he has nice hair, even if it's matted with blood.

It's long and soft, the color a shade of brown that her locks used to be like before godhood changed them into white.

What is she supposed to do with him?

She prods him with her foot, but he doesn't stir.

Is he dead?

She gets on her knees gingerly before placing her hands on his chest. His heart thuds faintly beneath her palms.

How is she supposed to heal him?

She is an ice goddess. All she can do is freeze up things.

She sits there contemplating for a very long time and it's the sound of teeth hitting against teeth that breaks her reverie.

He is shivering.

She silently curses herself for her stupidity in her head and gets up to search for something to warm him up. But the only thing in this ice palace are the jars of peach wine that goddess sends for preservation.

She looks at her dress.

It's old and worn out, frayed at the edges, and it is hardly going to do him any good. He starts moaning from cold and pain, and she runs out to escape the sound.

What if he dies?

What will she do with the body?

How will his loved ones find closure?

He must have a family. A father, mother, perhaps siblings?

What is she supposed to do now?

What was she thinking? It was the sound of her name, uttered out loud after so many years that made her search for him and drag him away from the dark woods to her icy domain. She must have suffered from temporary insanity.

She starts walking towards the woods.

He needs warmth if he is to survive his injuries. She doesn't know much about medicine and healing, but the least she can do after dragging him to her ice palace is keep him warm.

Lost in her thought, she continues her trek and doesn't even realize that she has crossed the boundary of her prison until she sees an antelope gallop away in the dark. She looks back and her frozen footprints taunt her.

Before she can scurry back to the other side of the line in fear, a howl echoes nearby.

Years from now on, this memory is still going to haunt her dreams in perfect clarity. It happens in a split second. The wolf prances towards where she stands, its golden eyes boring into her.

She takes a cautious step back instinctively, body ready to flee the moment the wolf lunges at her. She stares into the golden eyes that seem more intelligent than those of a regular animal and she stills.

The visions of blood, fangs and snarls fill her head. In her head she sees the wolf chase a young man across the woods. She sees the wolf walk on his two legs and turn into a man who pulls out a crossbow from thin air and notches his golden arrow. She sees the arrow pierce the man who wept and begged her to save him.

The wisps of cold air start escaping from the tips of her fingers. The wolf growls, she flicks her wrist sharply and a needle thin shard of ice imbeds itself in the soil near where the wolf is balancing on its haunches to jump.

She has never used ice consciously.

It hurts her bones, but her heart feels lighter.

She feels free.

The wolf attacks and she impales it on a thin spear of frost that feels as if it were fashioned for her hands alone. It struggles. it tries to cling on to life for a long while but after painful minutes, the energy deserts it. It's jaw opens wide and it gives one last mournful howl before the heavy body aided by gravity slips at the base of the ice spear.

She has never killed anyone before.

Her hands are steady when she fashions the ice into a sharp cleaver and skins the animal. She leaves the flesh, bloody and out in the open for animals to feast on.

The wolfskin feels softer than it should and it wraps around her shoulders comfortably. The smell of rust from blood lingers even though she iced the skin multiple times. But it's okay. The almost dead man won't mind a smelly blanket of wolf skin if he survives.

When she returns, his lips have already turned blue. He looks like someone who might pass into the domain of death any given second.

She rushes to where he lies, somehow curled around himself, all his injuries on display. She manages to wrap him snugly in the wolfskin, rolling him up so that only his battered and swollen face is visible.

Minutes pass and yet the blue doesn't recede from his lips. There is nothing around that she can give him to warm him up. She is reminded of the peach wine, but she dismisses the idea the moment it pops in her head.

It would do him more harm than good.

There is no chance of lighting a fire inside her palace or anywhere near her vicinity.

So, she does the only thing that comes to her mind. She cuts open her wrist and presses it against his lips. Forcing open his mouth, she lets her cursed, warm blood fall on his tongue. It dribbles from the side of his mouth.

She sits on the floor and then drags him in her lap. She raises his head and holds her bleeding wrist to his mouth. She balances his head in the crook of her elbow and massages his throat. He swallows a few drops. She continues the motion till she feels his lips latch on to her wrist.

He takes a few mouthfuls and his head rolls to one side, some of the blood dribbling on the wolfskin.

His lips are still blue, but now there is faint color on his cheeks.

All she can do now is wait…

~TX~

His name, she comes to know, is Elijah and he is the second son of the Goddess of Arcane.

His face, which miraculously returned to its former glory in the morning after his rescue, is the kind of face that hints at likanen verta descent. His nose is too blunt, his lips too thin, his forehead too wide, his jaw too square, but his eyes are the brown that reminds Elena of her father's eyes. His hair is the shade that reminds her of her own.

He is an outcast too. It's there on his face, in his timid gaze, in hands that shake and body that vibrates with nervous energy.

They must have been merciless in their teasing.

After he opened his eyes, it was hard to persuade him to not prostrate himself in front of her. She finds that absence of emotion has made her stoic and too much of it at once is painfully mortifying.

Few days of awkward tension is all she can endure before she suggests he return home.

He instantly refuses stating he has nowhere else to go and that he will serve her for his lifetime if she accepts.

She doesn't want to accept, in fact she is ready to voice her feelings when he suddenly falls on his knees in front of her.

'Let me stay beside you,' he whispers, 'I will cook and clean and make sure that your goblet never runs out of peach wine…'

'I hate peach wine,' she finds herself admitting, albeit with a certain carelessness.

'I…I will bring grape wine for you then, one that I brewed myself and hid in hopes of drinking one day.'

She stares at him, this young, foolish godling who wants to stay in this cold with her. She envies him. He has a choice.

She had none.

'I will tell you stories of lands I have roamed and legends I have heard, the whispers I have secretly listened to about the mad goddess and her primordial lover…'

He is cunning, this godling. He is looking at her expectantly and she can see the calculation going on in his eyes. She almost laughs.

Does he want to stay here so badly?

What was his life like that he is ready to forsake it all and share this cursed existence of hers?

The thought sobers her.

'You can stay,' she says at last, tired of watching him kneel on the hard, icy floor. She starts walking away when the sudden tug on the hem of her skirt makes her stop.

'You are not jesting, are you goddess?' he asks timidly. 'You won't force me to leave after a few days, will you?'

'That depends on you,' she replies, extracting the cloth from his hold.

What a silly godling, she thinks in humor as she walks out of her palace, heading towards the woodlands.

Well, at least she won't be lonely anymore…

**I hope you guys are okay! Stay safe everyone… **


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

'_I can't carry this weight of silence anymore…'_

The dream jolts her awake again.

It is the same dream she sees when she goes to sleep. That hideous dream wherein she is screaming in anguish, holding Elijah's dead body, her hands painted with his blood. It's a recurring nightmare that doesn't go away no matter how hard she tries.

He is painted on the insides of her skull and her eyes, every day spent with him, every grisly detail of his demise, it's there in her head like a story that plays over and over again.

She is the reason he is dead.

Her greed is the reason why he isn't alive in some distant corner of the universe.

Had she only refused his request and turned him away after she saved him, he wouldn't have died. A fact that the goddess had taken great pains to reiterate over and over again.

Her punishment was only hers to bear and no one else's.

No one can share her loneliness.

_No one is allowed to. _

Before Elijah, silence wasn't vicious, but now, the same silence makes her want to die. She misses the sound of his conversations, the stories that he weaved in the dead of night when his breath smelled of peach and frost, the hum of his songs as he stood staring at the stars of the night sky.

She misses the sounds he made more than she misses him.

So, she takes to singing.

She sings about all manner of things, about the birds that seldom take flight in the skies above her palace, the woods that teem with woodland creatures, the humans she spies on when she ventures into the town, the memories of her father that are barely there, the taste of food that has become foreign, and the cold, the cold that is her blood and bones.

Goddess in her kindness extended the boundaries of her prison to include nearby towns, and now she finds all manner of things in the woods that hide her palace. Small tokens of respect, inconvenient sacrifices out of fear to appease her, gifts aimed to please.

She is supposed to be their patron deity, and somehow she didn't get the memo of her promotion.

Days keep passing, seasons change. Another God ascends to the throne of High God and she finds herself invited to the coronation.

She doesn't know who is more surprised, the messenger who comes bearing the invitation, or she who draws her sword on the poor man when he comes into her sight.

The verses are flowery and she gets a sense that this High God is too enamored with his own barely there legend. This one won't stay too long on the throne. A challenger will rise soon enough.

In the end, she declines. She might be sick of silence, but she knows it far better than she does the gods. The note attached with the invite also states that she is free to move as per her pleasure, that nothing binds her to her prison now.

She wants to laugh at the audaciousness, but she doesn't. Some long buried habit whispers in her head that laughing would be a show of poor manners.

She retires to her bedroom when the man departs and sits on the bed thinking about the festival the townsfolk are going to celebrate in her honor. She might be lacking in all the ways, but for humans of these three towns, she is the saviour who repelled the attacks of marauding bandits.

It's nice, she thinks, to be appreciated now and again.

She is not free of this place, will never be free even if a High God decrees it. This High God might think that his words carry a lot more weight than a goddess who doesn't sit on the council, but Elena is not a fool to test mad goddess's goodwill.

She still remembers the pain as the goddess's fingers curled atop her shoulders to hold her steady when she poured her heartache inside Elena and rid herself of the pain.

The mad goddess, Elijah told her, they whisper she is saner now. That her peach groves are open in millenias for immortals to walk through, that she picks the peaches now and makes jam with them, and goes out at night feeding starving, abandoned Likanen verta children.

All at her expense, Elena thinks bitterly. Why couldn't the mad goddess forgive a child's act of plucking her peaches to fill her hungry stomach? What makes these likanan verta younglings any different? What makes them eligible for the goddess's mercy when Elena was shown none?

She sighs as she turns to her side. She is growing jealous of small children. She is truly disturbed.

~TX~

She grows bolder in the absence of restraint. She starts venturing out farther from her prison, returning later than she would have in her early days. She starts visiting the markets, keeping herself in shadows as she peruses their wares.

One stall is selling beautiful shoes. She doesn't need them anymore, but they are pretty to look at. Another boasts vivid fabrics in the colors of sun, sky and woodland she has escaped from.

At a distance is a restaurant.

She watches people come and go and it takes the longest time for her to muster enough courage to step foot inside the establishment.

No one stops to stare at her.

And neither does mad goddess come from behind, sword waving in air to run her through. She takes tentative steps towards a table at back, passing through people eating and gossiping away like magpies.

The aroma of fried food and spicy broth is overwhelming, and yet she smiles when a boy comes to ask her what she would have for her meal.

She feels her lips curving and cheeks stretching. She is aware that the boy is looking at her in annoyance and that the strange turn of her face might stratle him further, but her lips refuse to bid her command.

It feels strange that her mouth is open and her teeth visible, that her cheeks ache.

The boy asks again, and she continues to smile.

"Everything," she croaks and he departs, a spring in his step and her heart feels funny.

She devours the food.

It doesn't matter that she hasn't eaten in millenias, that she doesn't need to. The rich taste sits nicely on her tongue and she feels as if she could take on gods and beasts alike in this moment and win.

She leaves four gold coins and a mountain of animal bones on the table, and presses two on the palm of the boy who has come to clear the dishes.

She could go on wandering from town to town, listening to the tales humans spin of gods, monsters and divine beings, eating their food, looking at beautiful things they craft from their hands.

Maybe, the years have chipped away at her fear, now that Elijah is nothing but a memory, locked in a corner of her mind and seldom visited, now that the mad goddess hasn't paid her a visit in all those years.

Maybe that's the reason why she can trick her head into believing this illusion of freedom.

She is deep in her thoughts, feet marching towards her palace when she stumbles over a bundle.

She pushes against the earth in a huff, grumbling about humans and their habits of leaving things in her forest only to be startled.

Brown eyes are peering at her, set in a fair face, a small rosebud mouth opening and closing slightly.

There is a baby in her woods, a human child, she thinks in bewilderment.

She closes her eyes and pinches her arm, opening them warily. He is still there.

Is she having visions because of the food? Did she eat something that is making her see a small child staring up at her, a child who by the look at his face is about to either poop or cry?


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

**Airani: Ice Wisps**

**Tatki: Mother**

**Tatkan: Grandfather**

~TX~

She names him Jeremie.

He's a tiny, little thing who gives her gummy smiles and bright eyes when she cradles him in her arms. He seldom cries and doesn't make a fuss when she feeds him.

He is hers.

Her Jeremie.

He doesn't belong to those humans who discarded him just because of conjoined toes in his right feet. They left him in her forest, expecting him to die. She swathed him in her furry cloak and picked him up instead, carried him back to the human settlement to buy some milk.

The thought of returning him never once crossed her mind.

After all, the things left behind in the woodlands belong to her.

She holds him carefully, making sure her hands don't touch his soft, pale skin. And when she blows raspberries on his stomach, her lips are lighter than butterfly wings.

He fills her silence with the noises he makes and late in nights when she points out the stars and sings, he coos in pleasure.

He rarely cries and likes sleeping in her arms, fidgeting only when she puts him down in the nest of soft pelts she has made on one side of her bed.

She tells him stories, half forgotten ones that she once heard from her father, and makes new ones when he opens his mouth and scrunches his face on her second retelling of the same story.

She forgets the mad goddess and Elijah who had tried sharing her solitude. She forgets the glint of goddess's sword when she tore apart Elijah.

She forgets that her godhood is her punishment.

Jeremie delights in little snow sparrows chasing butterflies made of ice lattices. He laughs when frost jaguars open their maw and roar, shaking the garden of ice flowers she created for his pleasure.

For the first time, the cold in her veins and her bones doesn't hurt. His incoherent rambling coaxes ice readily from her palms, and the little shapes rising around her don't feel like betrayal.

She is going to teach him everything she knows, and also the things that she doesn't.

One day, she is going to walk with him to the valley of flowers in the South and show him the vibrant colors that bloom on delicate branches. They are going to eat delicacies and laugh at plays humans put for entertainment. She is going to teach him about stars and constellations, about gods, demons and dragons.

Every day, she mixes a drop or two of her blood in his milk to make him impervious from common human injuries and maladies.

And after a month, her hands hold him without his blanket of fur, and he doesn't flinch from her touch.

She kisses his forehead in delight, laughter comes bubbling past her lips, it's tone stilted and awkward.

He gurgles in response to her sound and she twirls in a circle, holding him protectively in her arms, sunlight shining like diamonds atop hard ice that stretches outside her door.

Her Jeremie.

One day he will ask her all the questions she annoyed her father with. And she is going to stand beneath the tree to catch him in case he falls as he climbs it.

They are going to touch wide, ancient trunk of oaks and guess their age, and she's never going to tell him that someone abandoned him, nor that she is a goddess because she stole some peaches while she was hungry.

~TX~

Jeremie is six and loves climbing trees and chasing butterflies. He flits through woods like fae and dances on snow like Airani.

And he has questions.

Many questions.

"Why is your hair white, Tatki?"

"Why do stars shine in the sky?"

"Do you know how flowers bloom?"

"Have you seen a bear fight a python?"

He is miniature her. From his manners and the white locks threaded with brown of his hair to his footfalls and the turn of his palm when he tries to make it snow, he is hers.

She might not have laboured, bled and pushed him from her womb, but her heart loves him the same.

Her son, she thinks fondly as she stands ready to catch him lest his grip fail on the branches of the deodar.

"Tatki, you need to come up. The snow looks the prettiest!"

She's never been able to refuse him anything, just as her father had been unable when it came to her. She tells him about her father, the man who painstakingly carved bones into flutes, reeds and lyres, who was godly enough to receive the ambrosia of immortality once every year.

"God's suck," He says at the end of the tale he has heard so many times. "But you don't, Tatki."

She scales the sturdy trunk and soon she's in a branch beneath his body. They are almost near the top of the tree.

Snow really does look pretty from here, she thinks as she carefully maneuvers Jeremie in her arms, and her independent son for once doesn't protest.

"Tatkan missed us, Tatki," He says softly. "See, he came to us as snow again."

She starts to cry softly in his hair, hands clutching him close to her body.

She told him once, she remembers, when he was five and he had asked in his earnestness, "where is your Tatko, Tatki?"

She had kissed his head and told him that her father visited them in the form of snow when he missed her.

She will not let the shadow of death fall over him. He will not know what death entails, what it brings in its wake.

He will not know the suffering this world delights in pouring on people. One day when he is grown, she will attend the Council of Gods with him by her side, and when the time comes, she will win him a kingdom for she can't pass hers to him.

Won't pass it to him.

Being an ice goddess is a curse, and what mother curses their child?

And so, perched high like birds on the branches of Deodaar, they watch the snow fall on top of the trees.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

In the end, she doesn't get to teach him anything.

It starts one sunny day when they are roaming the market, Jeremie dancing through shoppers, light on his feet. She is not worried. She has him in her sight and he knows not to stray too far from her.

She is comparing the feel of two fabrics, thinking of buying another furred robe for her son who has outgrown his last one. She can simply cover him up in the softest of pelts, but doing this, choosing his clothes and haggling for price makes her feel like a person. There are still some days when she gets lost in her head, thinking silence is all she has, but then his tiny hands slip into hers and he starts talking about all matter of things.

Like how the uncle at the restaurant always puts extra pieces of meat on her plate, how the woman who runs the shoe stall likes ruffling his hair and passing him sweets when Elena is busy negotiating the amount.

Slowly, awareness seeps and her eyes loose that far away look. He is wise beyond his years, her Jeremie.

They have built a life.

Most mornings, they trek through the forest, collecting herbs and wildflowers that grow near the oldest of Cedars. She sells them to the apothecary in the market.

There are days when she hunts the wild animals who go berserk and try to venture into nearby human settlements, skinning them and bringing the pelt to the market.

She keeps the softest ones for Jeremie…

It's his cry that breaks her out of her reverie. She turns hastily and sees him sitting on the ground, sobbing as he holds his bleeding hand, surrounded by people

She has him in her arms in a moment, her breath harsh and labouring as she tries to put pressure on the bleeding gash.

It's a knife wound, not deep enough to touch the bone, and yet not shallow enough to be cured by the blood-her blood-that runs in his veins.

She carries him to the apothecary and the elderly matron clucks and coos as she applies the paste and wraps the wound with clean cotton bandage.

Her mind is numb.

Someone hurt her son. Someone intentionally cut him open. Her son. The son she has guarded so zealously that there is not even a scar on his body. She has carried him in her arms, put him to sleep in her arms, fed him in the comfort of her embrace. He hasn't felt pain from the moment she picked him up. He does not know what it is to fall and hurt, to cry out. He doesn't know the way skin darkens in a bruise or burns hot as an open wound. And someone dared to hurt him.

The potion bubbling in the cauldron ices over, the fire dies and frost starts climbing the walls.

The matron is startled when wisps of vapour start escaping her bare hands.

"Did you see who hurt you Jeremie?" She asks quietly, hiding him in the swish of the wolfskin that sits on her shoulder when the matron steps away.

He hides his face in her chest in response, small hands clutching her sides in a grip that belies fear.

So, she doesn't repeat her words, instead she stands up, pays the terrified woman and makes her way out of the store.

She hums his favorite song as she carries him back, seething internally in rage, leaving behind trampled and obliterated grass.

"She wore a circle of silver berries on her head, Tatki," He whispers. "And her eyes were those of a wolf."

She pats his back in soothing circles, trying to calm him.

"She was a God, Tatki. She smelt like one… "

In the end she can't do anything, but watch her son die.

There is something in his blood that is crawling slowly in his veins, leaving them dark as it inches towards his heart. He sobs and screams, begs her to make the pain stop, and she, his mother, can't do anything but watch helplessly as he suffers.

She cuts opens her hand and tries to feed him her blood, but he chokes and vomits it all out. He is lost inside his head, fever burning up his tiny little body, skin painted with veins that press from inside of his skin.

She scoops him in her arms again, apologizing for hurting him and she runs like wind towards the human market, aware of the death dogging her heels, eager to sink it's greedy, bony claw in her son.

The matron of the apothecary is closing the door when she finally comes to a stop.

It doesn't even take words for the old woman to push open the door and gesture her inside.

She lays Jeremie on a table and lights the lamp, before picking up a bowl from the lower shelf.

"Did his fever not break after I applied the medicine in the afternoon?"

"No."

She pulls a root from the tied bundle hanging from the ceiling, a lotus bud and a pinch of white dust and starts grinding.

Jeremie whimpers in pain as the black inside his veins crawls from shoulder to his clavicle, one branch making it's way slowly towards his heart from across his stomach.

When the old woman tries to spread the paste on Jeremie's skin, he screams, his small body bowing in half as his back jerks away from the table surface.

The skin of his legs starts turning ashy and when she touches it, his skin, and muscles crumble beneath her fingers to leave only the bone.

She doesn't need the old woman's gasp of fear or her fall to know that she can do nothing for her son.

He is dying.

So, she does the only thing she knows. She lays a gentle palm over his heart, willing the cold running inside her to pour out of her fingers like a lullaby. It's an act of love, the way frost freezes his heart and his nostrils still amid a flair of a half breath inhaled. Ice covers him like the toughest of cocoons, running over his skin, inside the gaping hole from where his bone peeks, digging into his veins, and climbing over every strand of hair on his perfect head to freeze him in perpetuity.

He is dead.

Her son Jeremie is dead…

**I am sorry. This hurt me, but I needed to do this for the story. I am sorry. **


	6. Chapter 6

**Likanen verta: mixed blood/ dirty blood**

**Chapter 6**

An inhuman scream rings in the air as humans huddle in their homes in fear, trying to burrow in their blankets or inching closer to the fire for warmth.

The ice goddess is grieving, they whisper in hushed tones. What grief, some question. She froze her own son, what is she crying for, some condemn. They softly curse their bad luck under their breaths for having an ice goddess for a patron deity.

For twelve nights, the snow falls uninterrupted, and the wind carries soft cries of a heartbroken mother. The humans shiver in their skin, beneath layers and layers of warmth as the cold tries to dig into their muscles.

And then, on the thirteenth day, the sky shines blue. The sun makes its way across the blue, painting over it with orange and yellow as humans bask in its warmth…

~TX~

The stone is cool beneath her feet as she climbs the stairs to the Hall of Gods, even as the sun shines brightly overhead.

Tall doric columns of marble rise from above the clouds and stretch to infinity on either side of the stairway.

_This is heaven. _

The barren wasteland of her stories that gleams with vulgar shine of diamonds and rubies, the shameless opulence of it enraging her further.

This is the heaven that condemned a child to eternity of loneliness for stealing a few peaches, the heaven that doesn't apply the same standard of justice when it comes to transgressions of the gods that reside in its central Hall.

Heaven, she scoffs, where dwell the faint of heart and cruel of deeds.

The sentries clad in white robes stand guard at the entrance to the land that floats above the clouds, the land deemed heaven, their spears glinting in the rays of sun, blades casting a dark shadow over the ground.

They don't stop her.

Maybe it's the staff in her hand that intimidates them. A long, curved projection of ice as thick as her wrist and taller than she is, topped with a beating crystal heart that shines innocently even as it clinks with every beat.

Or maybe it's the unbound hair, the white of it at her back swaying in the nonexistent breeze, and the red eyes that have shed tears for twelve days continuously.

Or maybe, it's the wolfskin on her shoulders, one that she wears as cape, the fur glowing subtly.

She marches inside and stays on the pathway that leads to tall golden gates behind which hides her son's murderer.

When she pushes open the gate, the sound doesn't cease. In fact, they don't even notice her arrival. The gods are busy getting drunk on nectar as they watch a band of minor deities clad in translucent fabrics and precious stones swaying sensually on the music.

The High God who sits on the throne of sky is too deep in his cups, and he is the one who notices her first.

She knows what she looks like.

Feral, gaunt and grief maddened.

Not like the polished deities of this Hall.

A lazy gesture of his hand makes the music stop and the dancing women bow deeply before departing, giving her curious looks as they pass her by.

"Ah the infamous ice goddess," He drawls in amusement, leaning back to rest against the back of his gilded throne, letting his legs fall open suggestively. "To what do I owe this pleasure?"

She pays no mind to the drivel High God is spouting, her eyes busy in scanning the occupants of the smaller thrones that dot the Hall in a semicircle, with Sky throne as the centre.

"Goddess?" She finds her chin in the grasp of the High God who is standing inches away from her, turning her face, so that he can look into her eyes.

"Insolence!" She hisses as she steps back, fury evident in the gaze she levels at the man whose eyes are twinkling as he holds her stare.

"Ah, such fire, Goddess! You chose not to attend my coronation, and I was told you didn't leave your kingdom, hadn't left it since the day you ascended, and yet, here you stand…"

_Kingdom. _

_Ascension. _

She starts laughing. It hurts inside. The place where her heart should be is empty and she feels so hollow that she is surprised she has not been blown away by a gust of wind.

Her son is dead.

And this pretentious asshole is standing between her and the murderer of her son.

"I rule no land, I have no kingdom, High God. What I am is a prisoner, and ice castle, my prison."

"Klaus," He says in amusement. "Nik, of you will. High God doesn't roll off the tongue as easily as Nik or Klaus, does it?"

His eyes are the color of sky on a bright summer day, and his lips remind her of cherries Jeremie stained his hands with. When he smiles, there is a dimple at the corner of his mouth and she wishes she could stick her sword in his chest.

"I have come for the goddess who wears a circle of silver berries on her head and has eyes of a wolf," She says instead, eyes searching her quarry.

"Ah, what has Rebekkah done now?" There's fondness in his voice, an undercurrent of emotion she is familiar with. "Did she take something of yours, Ice Goddess? Something of value?"

_Something. _

She wants to scream. She took my son, she wants to cry out. She poisoned my son and he died a death so full of pain that the memory of it is enough to make me vomit, she wants to say. But he, the High God who doesn't think twice before laying his hands on her person, beats her to it.

"I will compensate you for your loss," He utters dismissively. "Now, let me show you the wonders of heaven. It is such an honor that you've chosen to grace my court as your first foray into society." His hand moves to take hold of the hand that lies by her side, but she steps out of his reach.

His eyes darken.

"Can you compensate me for the life of my son?" A hush falls over his court. The chatter ceases. No inebriated giggle rings or indecent remark is voiced.

"Son?" He frowns in consternation and his forehead folds into lines that do not suit his young face. "Pardon me, Goddess, but as far as I am aware, you have no son. I have not been informed that you gave birth to a godling. "

He's careless and oblivious in his statement, not noticing the way her face darkens and eyes gleam in anger.

"Rebekkah is not a fool, Goddess. She knows harming a godling is an offence punishable with death. Did she perhaps take your 'human attendant'?" He says snidely.

Her grip tightens on the staff. It is partly to rein in her anger and partly to get in an offensive position.

"Am I not allowed to have a human son?" She asks the man standing lazily in front of her. "Are we Barbarians, High God, that we don't recognize relationships that are not bound with blood?"

His smile is contempt and superiority molded in the shape of his lips. "I am afraid, Goddess, we at Hall of God's, don't follow such sentimental notions."

"Ah, so we are worse than Barbarians then. Was he not my son because I didn't push him out of my womb, didn't bleed when he was born?" She asks sadly, her voice echoing in the Hall.

"Your likanen verta roots are showing, Goddess. You should be careful if you don't want to be dragged to your palace kicking and screaming," He sibilates, a smirk accompanying his casually delivered threat.

Behind him, near one marble column twenty paces from his throne is a goddess partially hidden in shadows, part of her circlet catching the light filtering from the open glass dome.

The berries twined around her head shine silver and tiny emerald leaves wink at her.

She raises her staff once to tap it against the ground, and ice begins to spread in every direction. The frost climbs over the booted feet of the unsuspecting High God, freezing him on spot and by the time he realizes it, it's too late.

The ice makes its way towards her prey like a thousand headed Hydra, tentacles branching and moving in different directions, freezing drunk gods and server deities.

She spares the High God's head and his panicked blue eyes are the most beautiful things she has seen in the past twelve days.

Cold ropes of ice wound around the feet of the hiding goddess, moving in sync to truss her up and drag her back to Elena.

The frost that she wields, the ice that she commands has a life of its own and she has never before let it run wild and free.

When her son's murder is dragged back in front of her, her eyes stare at Elena venomously as if she is the victim, and the hand that has been still by her side rises in a smooth motion, and the wrist moves in a flick.

Needle thin ice picks embed themselves in wolfish eyes of her son's nightmares…

~TX~

**I hope all of you have been well. I am listening to "strange and beautiful" by Aqualung as I type this. Thank you for giving me your time and your words, the most precious of gifts. **

**I love you. Stay safe and healthy. **

**3**


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

Mad Goddess, they whisper when she passes, humans and Gods alike. Mad goddess, they shudder after she is gone, counting their blessings that her eyes didn't fall upon them.

They say she has built a garden of bodies, stripped flesh only to leave bone behind that she has covered in thick ice fashioned as trunks, decorated with leaves of frost and flowers of snow. They lower their eyes when they see a hint of her white hair and pale colorless orbs, the glint of the fur of her cloak, the fur that she skinned after butchering the Lycan king of East who had stumbled into her lands.

For that is the story on heaven as well as earth, that the ruthless Ice Goddess slaughtered the Lycan king of East for trespassing on her lands, and the Wolf Goddess who had been betrothed to the Lycan King poisoned the human boy Ice Goddess had taken as her son for vengeance. The Ice Goddess marched to heaven and obliterated the Wolf Goddess while also humiliating the High God in the name of justice.

Elena sits in the darkened corners of human establishments that specialise in drink, debauchery and stories and listens to her so-called acts of cruelty.

She is the one they call Mad Goddess now.

_She has become her creator._

~TX~

To say she didn't enjoy the pain she inflicted on Rebekkah would be a lie, and Elena has no use for lies.

When emptiness starts to snip at her heels, Elena fills it with Rebekkah's scream in her head and the High God's whining pleas to spare his sister, his useless threats of raining down heavenly wrath on her.

Jeremie's frozen face often stares at her from the centre of the Hall where she spends her days.

The spires of her castle are sharper, the walls wider than they were. Ice keeps adding to it useless rooms and staircases she doesn't need, arches and turrets that shine a little too sinisterly.

In more ways than one, Elena understands her punishment now. Her grief over her son makes her realize that the loneliness that Mad Goddess poured inside her as her punishment for stealing the peaches was ancient. It was born out of yearning and pain, a kind of hate that masochists only reserve for themselves.

She remembers her father's workshop and her questions. She also remembers his answers. The answers for why Mad Goddess is known as Mad Goddess (Elena is none too happy to have that title foisted over her by spineless humans and wimpy gods).

It must have hurt her to kill someone she loved, Elena thinks as she beacons the server to replace her empty jar of wine. To kill your lover for worthless gods, ah the tragedy, Elena muses as she stares vaguely towards the play they are enacting on the stage downstairs. This table in the balcony is perfect for drinking and watching stories being enacted by humans.

But tonight, the play doesn't hold her attention. She is actually listening in on the conversation between two men on the table behind her.

"I have heard the Immortal General has been summoned from the lands of Avunsuela." The voice is nasally and it irritates her ears. If not for gossip, she would have frozen shut his mouth.

"Do you think the High God will make him march to the lands of the Mad Goddess?"

For the umpteenth time, Elena thinks peevishly, she is an Ice Goddess, not the Mad Goddess.

"He should. Do you know what she did to Wolf Goddess? She gouged out her eyes, froze her inch by inch and stomped on her frozen limbs till only dust remained… "

These humans, where are they getting their information from? This is slander, Elena wants to turn and proclaim.

She hadn't gouged out Rebekkah eyes, merely blinded her. And as for freezing her inch by inch, she had only let frost turn a part of her leg solid and crushed it.

It wasn't her fault that when she froze Rebekkah completely, her leg somehow ended up kicking the kneeling iced up Wolf Goddess who tumbled against hard marbled floors and shattered…

Not her mistake at all, she thinks resolutely. That prick Nicklaus, he's slandering her through humans.

"She won't stand a chance if the Immortal General is sent to dispatch her from Godhood," The not nasally voice says confidently.

"Do you think the Immortal General will do such a thing? After all, the Wolf Goddess did kill the boy."

"Ah, so you don't know?" The not nasally voice preens.

"Know what? What do you know that I don't?"

"Well, this is not widely known, but the Lycan King was Immortal General's brother…"

Ah, so she is to face off against a God for slaying that wolf again? Well, she was getting rather bored.

She stumbles home, slightly tipsy and euphoric at the thought of fighting someone again, but her mood is doused as soon as she enters the silent foyer and looks at the dark corridor that stretches in front of her, leading to the Hall.

"Jeremie, why didn't you light up Iceflies?" She hollers as she shuffles in the dark, hands dragging over the smooth cold surface of the wall.

"Jeremie, light up the next time I am out. Boys shouldn't stay in the dark… " Her clumsy hands are busy creating misshapen Iceflies that twinkle in the shadowed space and soon there are enough sitting on the walls and ceiling to mistake the roof for open sky.

Her son stands where she left him, and a sob breaks free from her throat.

He is dead.

He won't ever be scared of darkness anymore…

~TX~

It all started with Elijah, she thinks as lies on the floor, head touching her son's frozen feet.

She had known when she had killed the wolf and skinned him that the animal was also a man. What she hadn't known was that the man had a name: Stefan, and a title: the Lycan King of East.

She had killed him for almost killing Elijah, not because he had been some innocent who had accidentally stepped inside the boundaries of her prison.

But no one cares for that, do they?

She is a vicious beast in their eyes, a mindless Goddess who goes on killing sprees to satiate her bloodlust.

There are no stories about Elijah, no plays about a shy man who chose to live in freezing solitude instead of returning home to his family. The High God doesn't tout about his older brother who suddenly vanished one night, never to be seen again.

The truth that never passes Nicklaus's lips is about a man named Elijah who had once been a contender for the Sky throne, a brother born to his mother from a different man, a lesser man.

Nicklaus never claimed a kinship with Elijah despite having one, going as far as to get his friend Stefan to hunt him down like an animal.

Elijah's mother, the Goddess of Arcane didn't care enough to seek vengeance for her slain son.

Elijah was nobody, and so, history has all but forgotten him.

Elena hasn't. She isn't sorry for killing the Lycan King. She isn't sorry that she left his carcass after she took his skin for vultures and wild animals to feast on.

If she hadn't saved Elijah, she would never have picked Jeremie. And not having her son in her life would have been a punishment far worse than grieving for him.

So, she isn't sorry for killing the High God's prospective brother in law. Or his sister.

And she sure as hell doesn't care about the Immortal General, who so ever that may be…

~TX~

**Dun-dun-du-dun. Lovely people, you left lovely words for me. I am bopping on "Gravity' by Kim Jong Wan. It's a dreamy track that made me pour out the words for this chapter. If you're into kdramas and kpop, give it a try. I am also currently watching "The King:Eternal Monarch" and absolutely loving it. See you next time. **

**Stay safe. **


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

Elena spends her mornings sleeping in the blessed dark of her Hall where ice doesn't let a ray sunlight pierce the shadow.

Her ice has taken a life of its own. When Elena passes out in the woods while returning inebriated, the ice drags her to her palace by foot.

It combs her hair, rubs against her face to wake her up, pinches her to buy new clothes for the sake of her modesty.

It tries to do everything her son would have done, and some nights when Elena cries in her sleep, thin protrusions of frost fall from the ceiling against the hard floor in a symphony to lull her back to sleep.

Elena knows she is falling, that grief has now become an excuse to lose herself in alcohol. She knows that her heart doesn't hurt the same way when she thinks about her son. Years have passed and she has almost stopped hurting. And that realization drives her to drink more.

She hates herself.

What mother forgets the pain of losing her son?

Maybe the people are right. She wasn't a mother to begin with.

Ice has covered her wounds and hardened her heart. She is the Ice goddess. She is no longer Jeremie's mother. Even the cursed tears don't fall from her eyes when she stares at the frozen form of her son.

She is heartless.

So, she drinks.

At Least, when everything is hazy and her mind muddled, she can pretend that her frozen boy is alive…

~TX~

When she opens her eyes one morning, she is not near her son's feet. She is lying on her bed. Covered with sheets, her cloak nowhere in sight.

And there's a human sitting on the floor beside her bed.

A human.

_Sitting on her icy floor from who knows how long. _

She hastily throws away the covers, intending to rouse the human who may or may not have died from exposure to cold. The human shifts probably as a reaction to the noise, and raises his head from where it has been lying on her bed.

His eyes are scrunched and waves of hair fall over his forehead, long enough to touch the cheek. He is pale and he has a nice mouth, Elena thinks, surprised by the line of her thoughts.

His hands move the hair away from his face and he rubs his eyes, trying to shake off the last traces of sleep.

He opens his eyes-

And Eena promptly closes hers…

They are blue.

The human's eyes.

They are blue.

The kind of blue that is left in a sky on a sunny day.

The kind of blue reflected in her eyes when she shallowly freezes a lake.

The kind of blue that her son looks like…

It is quite some time before her lids move and her gaze falls upon him. He is staring at her.

He is pale, and angular, sharp bones softened with skin, his jaw curves to form a face which is haunting in its beauty.

Elena thinks she is still drunk.

There is no other reason for why her eyes hold his gaze and she sits staring at him, unmoving.

If it weren't for the icicle that drops from the ceiling to shatter against the foot of her bed, she thinks they would've sat there looking like fools.

"Who are you?" She croaks as she swings her leg to the side. Ice crawls from beneath the bed to mold itself into slippers of snow. She huffs as she pushes her feet into it.

The ice is temperamental. It likes wrapping itself on her body like a blanket she can't shake, in forms that it deems are necessary for her. In mornings it's a sheer stretch so thin that it almost resembles a fabric when it moves over her cheeks, then it morphs into a comb as it painstakingly works out tangles she doesn't give a damn about. It's always some kind of footwear before she steps outside her palace. Her ice doesn't like her bare feet on brown earth, her skin over stones, leaves and thorns that litter the streets.

"Your name, human?" She questions again, as she moves to round the bed to get a good look at the boy who is somehow in her palace and still not dead.

"Damon," He whispers. He has folded his body on his knees, head bowed in supplication, palms flat over his thighs.

_Oh_.

He sits like the boys at the brothel she passes sometimes on her way to the next town, awaiting instructions from their master.

There is something vulnerable in the lines of his body, a fear that she notices when she's near enough that her snow shod feet are inches from his knees.

His hair is unruly and it curls. Unbidden, her hands sink in his locks, and she grabs a fistful to tilt his head up.

His eyes are still on the floor.

She gives a harsh tug and he whimpers as his eyes meet hers.

"What is a human doing in my palace?"

"I…I found you… p-passed out in the forest."

His eyes are glassy, and she is sure if he blinks one more time, tears are going to make a perfect track on his pale cheeks.

Her hold is probably too strong, she thinks, but her fingers don't ease up.

"And what were you doing in my forest?" She asks softly, but there is a sinister edge to her voice that makes him flinch.

He doesn't answer, but his eyes, they are wide and pleading.

She waits for pity to well, for her heart to hurt, but even after countless moments, she doesn't feel a thing.

She grips his jaw so tightly that she knows it's bound to hurt. He cries out softly and the tears that run down one of his cheeks wet the tip of her index finger.

She doesn't feel a thing.

Frustrated, she let's go of her hold on his hair as well as his face, and he sinks, spine bowing as if he's a puppet and she's cut off the strings.

"Why were you in my forest, human?"

"I was running away," He confesses softly.

"From?" She picks up one of his hands that's lying in his lap, turning it to examine his palm. There are calluses at the base of his thin shapely fingers, scars of cuts long healed.

"My master… "

Ah, a runaway slave then. But he's too pretty to be a common one.

_A whore, perhaps?_

"Tell me, boy," She drawls as she drops his hand, "how come you aren't dead from the cold?"

"I have spent many a night freezing outside my master's door," He replies bitterly, raising his head to look at her, expecting her to see his suffering in his eyes.

She doesn't care for his pain, she thinks in resignation. She is the Ice Goddess. She is eternal and unchanging. She has no use for softness or feelings.

He's pretty and hurt, and used to receiving pain, she thinks in surprise. He is the kind of toy she wouldn't mind having for herself. She knows gods have pets. She can have one too, can't she?

She tried for a companion, and got a good man killed. She wanted a son, but got a frozen statue of her boy in return. She can have a human pet. They aren't envied or frowned upon in Heaven or by Mad Goddess.

Pets are allowed. You don't hurt when they die. You bury them in a corner of your garden, shed tears for a moment or two and then, you move on. You get a new one and you lavish all your shallow affections on it. It doesn't demand anything, is content with whatever scraps of feeling you are willing to throw it's way.

A pet won't hurt.

"So, would you like to serve me, human?" She asks. The tendrils of ice twine around her arms like baby snakes, coming to rest around her wrists in a thick band.

One rope of it twines around her throat like a choker, another moves over her forehead to settle as a circlet of ice spikes.

Were she someone else, she would've been red from mortification, but she has grown used to the displays.

"May I?" The naked hope in his eyes, in those damning blue eyes makes her want to hide.

She should turn him away, she thinks again. She might not feel anything, but those blue eyes, they are trouble. And Elena doesn't want to care again, doesn't want to give grief another chance to pull one over her.

She simply won't care, she thinks resolutely. He's just a pet.

"Come now, human, let me show you the place where you will stay…" She calls out.

The walls in front of her move to give way to a columned corridor.

She is bored enough to give a tour to a human. Where is that blasted Immortal General who was to fight and defeat her?

She has been waiting for years for that fight and that God still hasn't come calling at her door…

**Watched a really cool movie, "Divine Fury". My song of the moment is " Valentine's Day" By Linkin Park. So, you people were really awesome with the words that you left for me in reviews of the last chapter. Come say hi to me on Twitter or Facebook, the link is in the bio. **

**Stay safe. I love y'all. **


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

The cold press of ice in her palm feels foreign, and she watches dispassionately as the long glassy rope moves to fall on Damon's flesh, cutting it in ribbons.

The red against white is a contrast she doesn't care to remember, and yet, it makes her think of that day, ages ago, when she marched inside the Hall of Gods and blinded Rebekah.

He is curled around his stomach, hands raised to save his face as she whips him mercilessly.

The pieces of her son's frozen form lie beside him. _He broke her son. _

Damon pushed against the statute and it tipped, and shattered against the floor with a tinkling sound.

Why are there no tears in her eyes?

Why isn't she crying?

She wants to cry.

And kill the human who took what was left of Jeremie.

But he whimpers when her hits land and the sound reminds her of Jeremie's final moments. Her hands shake and the rope dissipates, but she doesn't know what to do.

Damon is crying and chanting apologies under his breath.

He has been her shadow since the moment she told him he could stay. He walks behind her when she ventures in the markets, eyes narrowed and staring at the people who approach her. He even punched a man who was leaning a little close to Elena when they went to watch the new play.

As if Elena needs saving.

As if she can't punch assholes on her own.

It was endearing.

She looks at her hands, the skin pale and smooth, capable of wreaking havoc over cities and countries, over heaven itself. These were the hands that had cradled her son. Put him to sleep with gentle pats on his back.

Where has all that gentility, compassion, and kindness gone?

Not once did Damon beg for mercy, she thinks. Not once did the boy plead to spare him. He only apologized and took the lashes as if he deserved them.

Did he deserve pain?

And the question startles her like a bolt of lightning touching her skin, jolts her awake from the hazy, sleepy fog she has been in since Jeremie's death.

Her son has been dead for years and years. Her feet move towards Damon's prone form. Jeremie's dead and she avenged him. His body, she should've let it go.

She sits beside his shaking body.

She willingly inflicted pain, she thinks in disgust. How is she different from those bastards up in the Hall of Gods?

A wave of her hand and a hole opens in the floor, the pieces of Jeremie's body disappearing in the space.

She will lay him to rest in a meadow, she thinks. She will do it after she has dealt with what she has done in her apathy.

She gingerly touches Damon's arm and he flinches, tries to move away from her touch. She deserves it.

"I am sorry," She says as she maneuvers him on his front, head cushioned on her thigh. The wounds run deep, flesh parted and gaping and she wants what she has always wanted in the moments faced with human and godly fragility: for her hands to wield anything but ice.

Maybe, in this moment when his body lies bloody and broken, she finally understands her godhood.

She is a God, she thinks. She isn't supposed to hold on to things. She isn't supposed to covet, want or need. She is a God, and a God can't give into grief, can't let longing creep into her heart.

She is supposed to be eternal, unbothered by human tendencies.

She is a God, she thinks with resignation.

She isn't supposed to feel too deeply.

She gently lays his head on the floor, and stands up, shrugging the thick fur cloak to wrap it around him.

She picks him up easily and ice morphs around her, shortening the distance to the main door. His struggles are feeble and she holds him tightly, paying no heed to his whispered protests.

Elena owns up her mistakes. She did this to him, and she isn't so full of pride as to not take him to the apothecary to hide her deeds.

"I have been a terrible mistress, haven't I?" She talks as she walks, arms full of his weight, warmth making her uncomfortable. Despite the cape he is wrapped in, she can feel his temperature and it makes the ice want to cover the bundle in her arms to extinguish the heat.

"I have never before wielded my whip on a human," She confesses.

"It's… it's okay, mistress," He whispers. The sound of his labored breath moving in his hollow chest is too loud.

_"_It's never okay to hurt someone, Damon," She says sadly.

The memories of her small form bundled in her father's lap while he combed through her wild hair are exceptionally vivid today.

_"It's never okay to hurt someone, Elena…_ " She doesn't remember the context of the conversation, the story that perhaps preceded it, the cause that left her with mud on her cheeks, scratches on her small arms and hair, a crow's nest. "_Not even when they hurt us?"_ Pipes baby Elena in her memories, eyes narrowed and lips in a pout.

Her father's reply is lost in the disappearing haze of her memories. It has been so long that only instances remain now, and a vague feeling that she once had a father who adored her the most in the world.

So, this piece of memory is a surprise.

"I had a son," She says. "He died. The statute you bumped against was his body."

His repeated "I am sorry" is just a faint impression now.

"I should have let him go," She says, crossing the unmarked boundary of thinning trees that marks the borders of her realm. "I was holding on to the wrong things. I should have kept the memories and let go of the guilt… "

He doesn't say anything, and the sound of breath rattling his chest is faint at best.

"Open your eyes, Damon," She commands softly and the wet lids move to present blue eyes that are more the color of the bruise than the sky.

"I will try not to be a barbarian from now on," She promises softly as she crosses the threshold of the apothecary.

Next hour passes in a flurry of activities. She waits outside, according him his privacy and when she is called inside again, he is bandaged across his torso and upper arms, his eyes closed in an exhausted sleep.

Carrying him back is no bother. His temperature is still running on the higher side and the man who dressed his wounds and fed him medicine told her it wasn't anything to worry about.

The rhythmic movement of his chest is assuring and so is the falling snow.

_"Tatkan missed us, Tatki. He came to us as snow… "_

Jeremie would have loved the snow, she thinks as she walks inside her palace, moving towards the nearest door that ice opens. It is a moderate sized room with a crystal platform. She lays down bundled up Damon gently atop the cool, shiny surface and walks out, taking a right to the Hall, where she has stored the remains of her son…

~TX~

The humans who reside in towns near the Goddess' woodlands witness an amazing phenomenon that evening.

On one side of the sky, sun slowly sinks beneath the crystal blue horizon, slowly reigning in the burst of orange and yellow, while on the other side, snow keeps falling like peach blossom petals from soft azure sky.

In the heart of the forest, in a meadow carpeted where wildflowers run riot, she lays her son to rest, humming his lullaby for one last time.

The Ice Goddess bids her son her final farewell…

~TX~

**Wish I had those ice powers. Summer is whooping my ass. Finished watching "King: the eternal monarch". The end could have been better. Currently moving my arms awkwardly in a facsimile of dance on " Milky Way between us" by O3ohn. **

**This one is coming to an end. Two to three chaps max, I guess. **

**Be on a lookout for a brand new Delena where Damon and Elena eyefuck a lot. **

**Love y'all. **

**Stay safe. **


End file.
